Well, EA aside, you also have to take in account the massive nature of the game. Pretty much everything is exceptional in BF4 when it works. - 64 players in a server - Every map is dynamic - Audio fidelity is pretty amazing - Graphical fidelity for the scale of what is going on is awesome - Nearly everything in the game has a degree of destructibility - Wavy water in MP (for those that do not know, this is EXTREMELY hard to do in an online environment) - And to top it all off, this is in a brand new engine running in 4 different architectures on 5 different machines.

Look, my point is this: Yes, while it has bugs - game-breaking ones - you can't argue that DICE consistently is pushing the envelope here. And if you really look into this lawsuit, it basically is a butt-hurt investor that is pissed that other projects are being put on hold to devote time to fixing BF4.

So, if you really want a game in which the studio plays it safe, and doesn't change it up much, go play Call of Duty.

It's not just about investors that are butt hurt. This is about the fact that based on statements made EA stock rose. Then EA employees ssold some stock. Then the bad press hits and the stock drops significantly. I think it was over 3.5 points. Thos is troubleing to major share holders who then investigated the situation and found grounds to sue. Not to mention the statements made during financial discussions were false and/or exaggerated. These are things that a public company can't do. This has Zero to do with games or gamers this is all business that just happens to be games.

Yeah they sound like they must have hired Peter Molyneux from fable to oversee the project. No wait Peter never fixed Fable he just bragged that 98 percent of games don't get finish anyway, so why fix it.

That reminds me there was some douchbags defending it just like this one. And I said it will happen more if people accept it. And here we are.

While I agree that they deserve criticism, honestly getting sued over battlefield is not a positive thing for the franchise at all. If you want a better battlefield suing the publisher is not the way to get it...

I just called EA again about 20 minutes ago. There was nothing they could do for a refund because they didn't sell me the game. However, they did offer to give me a sealed copy of the game in exchange for the physical copy that I had. They said it would take about two weeks for me to get it. I went to The GameStop I bought it from instead. They gave me a full refund with my receipt. I called Microsoft immediately after hanging up with EA. I told them that I was upset with Microsoft because they had told me in another conversation that they could not refund the game or the premium membership:

1. Because it was a digital copy. 2. That I would still have the license for the game even after the refund. 3. EA made a statement that they are the sole reason for the game being broken, so they have no obligation to refund anything. 4. EA makes the game, they received my money even though I bought it through the Xbox Store. Xbox doesn't make a profit from digital third party games sold through their store.

The representative from Microsoft, that I spoke with today, was very polite and professional. He said "Here's what I can do for you today. I can refund you the money for Battlefield 4 and you can keep your premium membership for when you decide to purchase Battlefield 4 later on. " I asked if I could get a refund for the premium as well and he said yes. "

I now have $119.24 on my Microsoft account. I also no longer have the license for Battlefield 4. I tried to play Battlefield 4 after I hung up with them and it asks if I am the owner of this game. When I view the game in the store, it no longer says installed but buy $59.99 instead. So, they can return digital purchases after all.

I don't understand why this is front page news every day. When I played BF4 on PS4, there weren't many issues. I just got booted back to the XMB a bunch of times.. maybe 10, 20 times, who knows. But with the amount of games I played, it didn't really bother me at all. I just restarted the game and jumped back into another match a minute later.

Big whoop, boo hoo, let's sue /s. Maybe others are having bigger issues, but I didn't notice any personally. Smooth campaign and a few random boots from MP, nothing worthy of front page news and lawsuits.

@Shake, I agree with all you have said and I think DICE are great developers but EA has to take the hit here. BF4 should not have been released in this state. I play it on PS4 and after 3 or so updates it is still buggy as hell, and I can't even play the DLC. I would rather have it come out in march so I could invest my €70 in something else while I waited for BF.

Shake_Zula...have you read the lawsuit reasoning from the different articles about this?

Investors are suing because EA lied about the strength of the title...As a consumer, you can argue about how great and innovative bf4 is...when it works...until you're blue in the face...

but when a company actively takes in money, and actively campaigns capital investors with an upcoming product that is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars...and DOESN'T point out that there fundamental programming flaws with said product...which results in very poor public image, and consumers actively demanding full refunds...

they get in trouble...thats all this is...people bought in to EA before BF4 released while being led to believe it was a wise investment opportunity...Obviously, if EA said, 'well hold off, because the game is truly broken right now'...No one would have a problem...but guess what EA did?

I agree, and I hope the suit succeeds; it would serve as a referendum on all publishers who release unfinished products under the guise of a supposedly complete experience.

However... with that said, I have to say that I'm not sure that it will be successful. Most people don't know that courts often weigh issues of public policy when coming to their decisions. While we as gamers would agree that the public policy is in our favor, I don't know that a court would agree. Imagine the rise in judicial action that would take place if this motion were to succeed - almost every publisher who failed to release a perfectly finished product would potentially be subject to legal liability. A court would look at that end-state and immediately give it the stink-eye. They would much rather we, as the consumers assume the risk of purchase and obtain our recourse through other means.

Speaking of which, there is either an express or implied warranty of merchantability with any sale of goods. So, unless we're somehow hoping for massive punitive damages in this case - which would be unlikely for the aforementioned reasons - the only damages any of the plaintiffs here would have a chance in recovering would be the opportunity to return their game for a full reimbursement.

I know that's hardly a satisfying result, but perhaps the bad press that flows from this lawsuit will accomplish the end result we seek. After all, it's not really about the money - it's about the games.

EA/Dice is actively trying to fix the game, and while no product is 100% customers need to stop thinking they're entitled to something because of a game that's bound to have some sort of issue(s). There's other games (some worse) which didn't have some sort of Law Suit (Fallout comes to mind) yet they get a free pass. I'm sure if people spend the 5 minutes to read the EULA at the end of a lot of manuals it will mention something about no product is without some sort of flaws that wasn't caught before release.

If you feel the game is that bad, vote with your wallet, and stop wasting time/money. I guarantee these people are the ones who go all day badmouthing EA yet still buy their products day one.

(Now for your response)

I hope this is a wake up call at least towards both customers and EA to stop releasing half-finished products to meet deadline. Sometimes I feel games are revealed either too early or they don't spend enough time testing.

I understand nothing is 100% however releasing broken games is a no no; I'd rather deal with delays than releasing a game, than constant patches that should have been in the game to begin with.

Shareholders because of the loss caused by the drop in stock values. Gamers will not get a dime. Sure, if they have to pay up this will probably give EA a kick in the nuts, but all this is about is, that EA didn't make them enough money, not that they actually released a broken game.

Gamers today are fairies, in the early to mid eighties every single game was broken in some way, some so much so that they were impossible to finish (Jet Set Willie). Nobody complained about this, they just enjoyed the games for what they were and had fun with them. Today's gamers act like whinging girls who complain endlessly about anything and everything. I suppose that to truly appreciate video games you have to remember how dull life could be before they became readily available.

In the mid eighties it wasn't nearly as easy to make large complaints like it is now. Gamers today have a much easier way to reach the publishers and developers than before.

Instead, developers and publishers also knew they had 1 real chance to release their games. If the game was to broken, buggy, or glitchy it was almost guaranteed that their next game wouldn't sell well. They had to make it right, or as right as they could, the first time. There was no day 1 patch.

I will agree that gamers today expect far to much, and demand far to much in terms of constant updates, information, and what not from developers during a games production. They also demand games more often, rather than longer, but better development time.

Your attempt to defend crappy game development in the name of making more money by beating a competitor on gamers is sad.

I enjoy games for what they are, just as I did when I was a kid, but I expect a working product.

The so called 'video game market crash' passed me and everyone else by at the time, you seem to bang on about it like it was a huge deal, it really wasn't. Console games died out for a while and everyone moved on to one of the many competing personal computers. There were loads of great games being made at the time (mid eighties) and it was a great time to be a gamer. Look at the C64 for example, the software was abundant in the mid eighties and high quality titles were frequently released, I should know, I was buying them. Some of the bigger publishers had problems but the market was a lot more diverse than today with bedroom programmers producing games that could rival the big names in terms of quality.

Someone has coined the phrase 'video game crash' retrospectively and everyone goes on about it now like it made an impact on the gamers of the day, it really didn't in the slightest.

@ExPresident You are very wrong in most of what you say. I was involved heavily in the gaming community at the time, every game was buggy and glitchy in some way (after all outside the console market most software was built by individuals and small teams of people). Gamers simply didn't complain nearly as much as they do now.

When you look at the mid eighties from a gamers perspective it was a great time. Codemasters were born from this era, a two-man team that produced great games such as advanced bmx simulator. US gold were producing California Games, Winter/Summer Games, we had titles like High Noon, Daley Thompson's Decathalon, Spy Hunter, Ye Ar Kung Fu, Impossible Mission, Bruce Lee, Spy vs Spy, Gauntlet, Ghostbusters and countless other quality titles were all being produced at the time. If that's a crash, bring on the next one please.

The C64 was a PC, the PC market and the home console market are two very different things (as any PC centric person will tell you even today). The crash affected the home console market and was definately a CRASH. lossing 97% of the market value might have passed you by because you weren't a businessman in the industry in the mid 80's but it happened, it was real, it was caused by tons of low quality titles flooding the most popular console of the time and nothing changes facts. As for the games being more diverse then with small 'bedroom programming teams I guess you haven't been paying attention to mobile games or the huge and growing number of indie developers coming out over the last 3 years. Diversity and new ideas have neen growing in that space at an astonishing rate with quality that usually is surpassing most AAA titles. Also your original point is still wrong, many games were released completely playable during the mid eighties just as many are today. There have always been technically broken games on every system but just look at your own list of titles and you'll see games that were at least playable and enjoyable. The problem now is many games are released broken with the idea of fixing it weeks or months later through patches. The quality control is becoming lax and it will lead to people buying less at release and just waiting 'til the game is half the price and functioning. Also, I'm sure lots of people complained about broken games then, some even made that angry complaining into an entire career. Ever watch AVGN?

Just because games were glitchy or buggy in the eighties, doesn't mean it's an excuse to release broken games in 2013. Game development is far different today. Gaming then was for a smaller minority where now it's for in the forefront of entertainment, where the money is. So with BF4 it was more about rushing the game out the door in typical EA fashion rather than fine tune the bugs.

And what's with the whole "gamers are fairies" remark! With stupid remarks like that no wonder you have to put a *prepare for incoming hate attack.

Defending it is utter tripe! Credit to Ubisoft for delaying watch dogs, they knew they needed more time to polish up and tune their game. Rather than release some half arsed product that would damage their IP rather than boost it.

It's about time developers get taken to task for releasing unfinished, buggy and glitchy titles.

@Mydying Maybe you should stop referring to it as a 'video games market crash' (as PC's play videogames too) and call it a 'console game market crash'. At the time there was no real difference between the PC and console market as PC's were used exclusively for gaming by the vast majority (well over 90% of owners NEVER used them for anything else). Gaming was an emerging market and people were trying different formats to see what worked. Today's market is a very different place.

@Grimm I'm not defending EA at all, I'm just fed up with the constant whinging and whining of gamers. The game works, it play's and its fun, yes it has problems and yes it was released too early, but its still enjoyable and will be fixed in time. Enjoy what is good about the game rather than focusing on the negatives, that's all I'm saying. Life is too short to be bitter all the time, try having fun instead.

I'm the creator and for three months maintainer of the only list of bugs and ideas in a thread that got stickified in the EA forums by Daniel Jonsson, one of the quality assurance guys at DICE, during the PS3 beta of BF: Bad Company 2. During this time i IM:ed several DICE employees on a weekly basis. And let me tell you straight from the horses mouth; EA whips these guys like there's no tomorrow. During a beta they essentially work during all wake hours. They don't leave the office for weeks at a time, sleeping on sofas and portable beds, drinking coffee by the gallon. Everything to squash as many bugs as possible before the much too short release date that EA has set for them. They are zombies during the bug-fixing stage. No wonder they can't fix half of them before release. EA are the slave-drivers of the video game business.

You can't justify a products problems based on its complexity. With your logic games won't even be playable at all ten years from now when there's even more stuff going on in them, because they'll be soooo complex there's no chance in the world that any human could make them stable. If you want to create a technically complex game you either keep working until its perfectly stable and then release it, or you don't even plan to create it at all. Complexity only means it's a matter of time. And time is that one thing that EA doesn't allow its developers to have. Companies choose exactly what products to create. Zipper's MAG also had a shizload of stuff going on during a match, and that's one of the most stable betas i've ever participated in.

I would only support this lawsuit if it were modified to be levied at EA only, and NOT at DICE. DICE stands to gain nothing from having their reputation dragged through the mud by releasing a premature product. I'm not willing to participate in essentially throwing them under the bus for trying to comply with what in the end is solely EA's release schedule. If anyone has any evidence that the developer is at fault in this situation, I'm all ears.

EA has contributed not a single line of code to what, despite it's faults, is a technical marvel of a game. Let's give credit, and assign blame, where each is due. DICE should not be punished for what seems to be EA's greed, and in the end the suit benefits shareholders more than gamers in the short term.

If this keeps up? What are yes suppose to do shut up like it? At&t puts this in there agreement for the same reason that parking lots put "you are legally responsible for your own car and property". And it has the same amount of weight in court NONE. It is a discouragement to people that don't know any better. Meant to intimidate you from trying.

@ indysurfn Yes, well said. Although, I wouldn't say it carries NO weight in court, your comments I believe are essentially correct. My understanding of English law at least, is that a clause added to a contract has to be 'reasonable' before that specific clause can be enforced in a court of law. In the example you give of the parking lot, the parking lot has a duty to provide reasonable security and care while your car is parked in their lot , and if they don't, it doesn't matter a jot what they put on their parking signage. It's high time software EULA's and such T&C's was taken down a peg or two. The idea that buying a piece of software entitles the producers to exact any and all restrictions they like is beyond comprehension. I have a feeling this continues because all the lawyers that do understand such laws work for the software companies, and the consumer is woefully under represented in this area of law.

Just because they do that doesn't mean they still can't get sued, what theyve done is illegal 100% and that is to falsely advertise the game (does not operate) pretty much internationally governments force a refund on an item if it does not function properly from people such as ombudsmans.

"It will work eventually, be patient..." It's really sad how low your standards are and the fact that you think this is acceptable. Instead of the consumer being patient and waiting for a game to work eventually, how about EA or any other company not put out a game that isn't finished. If I pay for a game than you better believe I expect that game to work, not some of the time but all the time. No experience is perfect but EA essentially sold a broken game to people, there is no excuse for that.

i'm a 100+ colonel on ps4.if i could achieve that ,then no its not as bad as xbox1.or p.c.There are some bugs in it that can be annoying as hell. but unplayable it is not. It sux but it will not physically hurt you

Until yesterday my PS4 version was almost perfect (got kicked back to UI 3 times)....but after yesterdays patch my campaign progress is gone and there are a few bugs like the revive options staying on screen after being revived.

Apart from that im still playing smoothly, no problems with lag or rubber banding or being kicked. Fingers crossed. All versions are messed up though.

bought it at launch, had issues for a week or so, then when the 1st 600mb update hit i had zero issues, with the most recent update i have had the revive thing happen as well as ive noticed some weird hit detection?? ( maybe lag on my end but i never experienced it before the most recent patch)

-oh and the sound issue happens sometimes. not unplayable but definatly not a finished product

I finished the single player campaign. The game crashed several times and would return to the title screen. Fortunately, this would occur only during the cutscenes between levels. It was kind of annoying, but it didn't prevent me from completing the campaign.

I've logged a lot of hours playing both the SP and MP... I have only crashed once and got booted to the main menu... and that was day 2 after release. NO PROBLEMS since then. Every once in a while I'm sure I scored a headshot but don't get an instant kill. I yell at the screen but that happens occasionally in every online shooter I've ever played. So I can't say for sure the culprit is EA.

- The game crashes about once each 2 or 3 hours and I have lost my SP progress once. - The performance is unstable in the frame rate (about every 4, 5 games there is one where it is not running very well) and rubberbanding (I played it a lot, but about 5 times I was 5 inches below ground, generating a lot of visual glitches). - The sound sometimes forget to exist. - Hit detection is complicated... I hit that guy a lot of times, but he killed me with 100% health? Okay...

I love Battlefield. I've been playing this since their first one... I guess you can say I'm a big BF fan, but even I will call BS when I see it. There are glitches with the game, and it came out WAY TOO EARLY!

Also, something that has been bothering me... Even though it's a new engine they are running, with some newer stuff.... It's like the exact same game was BF3. If you look at EA's previous games, you see they take on in different wars.. You have ww2, Vietnam, 2142, and modern... They've been on modern for some time, and they need to move onto something else.

Me personally, I would like them to re-amp 2142. Maybe something a lot later. It allows creativity and doesn't limit their ideas of what they can and can't do.

But hey.. This is just my two cents... And I'm out of bubbles to respond :(

Well, the problem is wide-scale; the reason why plaintiff uses the PS4 version in the lawsuit is because the court can subpoena the crash reports that the PS4 automatically sends for issues to get fixed. Also the PS4 acts as a constant for the lawsuit since it is a relatively controlled operating environment as opposed to PC's which have varying environments.

You would have think they would have learned after Sim City. I knew there were issues when they were limiting the amount of press review copies that went out under the guise of limited supplies. Please, Origin codes are abundant I know this as the P.R. firms always claim that games are in short supply where my E.A. Reps tell me that reviewers can always get an Origin PC code as unlike consoles versions they are abundant. All you needed to see is that they pulled Dice off their projects to fix it. You can bet Infinity Ward and Activision are laughing all the way to the bank over it as it has put issues with Ghosts so far on the back burner.

EA shouldn't even be able to publish or make games anymore in my opinion. They either never make changed in their games or completely ruin them, all they care about is sales which is a bad mind to have when trying to keep fans happy, which most of us aren't because some of our favorite games are ruined

I feel bad for DICE. Because they're getting all the headache as far as customer interaction (check the forums). But it's clear this game was just plain old rushed in a chance for a money/market grab. Real shame but i hope EA realizes now its not acceptable

And the irony is, the very same people sue because it didn't make them enough money. Those responsible in the first place. If share holders would actually care about the quality of the game and not share value, this wouldn't have happened in the first place. Greed runs deep in society these days.

What ever happened to the days of when game companies would provide demos? If they claim they have "nothing to hide" then they should honestly create one.. This game is just beta material that just got out of alpha. That's how buggy this game is. They need to address and fix the issues. Game modes are sooo bugged..

1. As far as demo goes, there is a recent article pointing to lower sales due to demos. False advertisement much? Well, false advertisement and hype is the base of gaming industry, so it's no wonder when they don't let us test the game before purchasing it.

2. As for betas... Well, we all know we are beta testing the game. Damn, general opinion is that we would be even beta testing the new consoles, since most people agree that the first batch is not the best at all.

I am not a BF fan as you, but I really enjoyed BF4 on PS4, played a lot already. For the game content, I'd recommend it, but for the lazy product they released, I can't show my support to the company.

I haven't had any trouble. it kicked me out of a game once. but I do think some gamers are over reacting tho. I don't understand how ea cant still fix the issues a lot of people apparently are experiencing

"Few gamers over reacting?" "Apparently"? "Some"? The game is broken. I can see using "some" if it was one console, one region, but you're talking every platform in every region. Shelling out $60+ on a product that doesn't work warrants everything coming to them. Also, it's not only on every platform, but multiple sites are reporting on it too-N4G, IGN, Kotaku, Polygon, even Forbes.

Unacceptable. This game came out nearly 2 months ago and I can confirm it is STILL buggy and crashes on the X1. No console has been immune to this. I played it for a bit last night then switched to Ghosts. It really upset me seeing how much better I'd prefer BF IF it worked correctly. It also makes me think when I read articles like yesterday of a claim an EA rep got nasty with a customer arguing the game was not broken. I also believe EA has reps or employees trolling articles like this doing damage control, including our own (Venom06 I'm looking at you pal!) Venom has 38 pages of comments doing nothing but defending BF4, MoH, and bashing CoD. Not ONE comment regarding anything else, and I'm sure there are more like him. Unfortunately in most class action suits, the consumer will lose. On top of a confusing method of getting involved, most of the award will go to the lawyers with us getting a small cut of what we actually paid. At this point, I'm just going to wait for GameStop to offer a "fair" trade in promotion where I won't get too butt raped.

Isn't really EA one of the companies best positioned for PS4 and XBox One? Has any other (third party) company actually released a single open world multiplayer game with a game engine that can utilize PC and Next Gen consoles?

Lets take the PS4 example: Of the 16 games available * EA has released five EA Games (BF4, NFS Rivals) EA Sports (NBA Live 14, Madden NFL 25, FIFA 14) * SONY has only managed two (Knack and Killzone) * Ubisoft two (Assassing Creed, Just Dance) * Activision three (Call of Duty, Skylanders, Angry Birds) * 2K Sports one (NBA 2K14) * Warner bros two (LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Injustice: Gods Among Us) * System 3 one (Putty Squad)

Well I see your point. On this occasion they released the game with problems, which enabled them to make short term money off shares.

It could result in better games if they decide to postpone next time, I don't think they could afford taking a short term gain and a long term damage to the brand. Didn't Ubisoft do that with their new driving game and Watchdogs?

That will hopefully result in a better game as its got more time in development. I think I answered your point but its really long and I'm tired! Sorry.

This game is an embaressment to the battlefield community. So much time and effort went into the map design, and gun balancing.,, Yet, they dropped the ball on user interface, Pre-game Squad setup, It also released Bugged -to the point of broken - this Cancels all the hard work they put into the game.

BF:BC2 had a much better interface, and pre-game options. in the words of BC2 *EP1C FAIL

lol dumbasses get what they deserve. They should know better than to buy a game with DICE on the box. BF3 was the last one I will ever buy. Given DICE's track record I can't see anyone going into buy any game they make with any sort of expectations. Plus the fact that they are "patching" the game and "trying" makes the lawsuit null and void. The only victims here are the idiots who bought the game in the first place....especially if they thought a DICE game would be anything but broken and a half assed beta.

Dumb lawsuit, let's go back and count all the broken games since the days of NES. Like I said apparently only Activision can put out crappy broken games. Any company putting out a broken game should be held responsible for fixing it or face lawsuits, but lets not be hypocrites about it.